Teaching Strategies

Erik on his Dissertation Research

• Big six s literacy standards
• Shapiro Hughs’ Information Literacy as a Liberal Art
• The model you adopt shows how to approach information literacy skills
• Cognitive process matrix diagram (very useful! See Erik for it!)
• Start with procedural and move to critical thinking (al la Bloom’s Taxonomy)
• Bloom’s helps you see where to fit critical thinking in
• Structured data: Google Labels and how Google works

Ellen M. on Standards from ALA

• Standards for the 21st Century Learner
• Comes from School Librarians, but very useful

Bobbie on Evaluating Web Resources

• Evaluating web resources exercise on our website (or Google “critical thinking for web”: there are many university sites)
• In 50 minute class
• Evaluation exercise with checklist
• Do this individually and then share in group
• Book: Cultivating Judgment by John Nelson includes activities compiled by subject area
• Give students a question and have them use three search engines. Compare across the three.
• There are also books in reference with activities

The groupwork went so well in the last class that I wanted to do a slight modification in today’s. Lest anyone get too settled, we’ll do another type of activity next week.

Today’s main goal was for everyone to learn a little about taxonomies; enough so that you can think back on it later if there was something that struck you. The secondary goal was for everyone to be able to think through how these taxonomies could influence their teaching. If we’d had time for a 15 minute discussion, we would have focused on how these taxonomies could interplay in your teaching, and how you can pick the best ones to focus on for a given topic. If that’s interesting to you, feel free to start the discussion in the comments!

The group task of the day was for each group to learn about their taxonomy, to contribute to the “handout” for the class, and to discuss, as a group, three ways that you do (or can) use this understanding of learning to encourage a stronger learning environment. The concluding presentation included an explanation and one example of how these models could include your teaching.

You can find the handout here.